A laminated stator core is made by a plurality of laminations that are stacked and fixed together to form an annular body.
In order to manufacture the stator, EP 1 592 110 discloses to group a number of laminations together to form “donuts” (i.e. annular elements made of a plurality of laminations) and to horizontally stack the donuts.
In addition, EP 1 592 110 also discloses a device having a rail with removable supports and a dolly movable on top of the rail; the dolly has a saddle that can hold the donuts.
During operation, the donuts are provided on top of the saddle, and then the dolly is moved towards the stator that must be manufactured.
In order to support the rail, a plurality of supports must be connected to the rail and, when the dolly with a donut on it must cross a support, this support is removed while other supports are not (i.e. one support is removed while other supports are not removed such that the dolly can cross the zone from which the support has been removed while the rail is supported by the other supports).
Then the removed support is connected to the rail again and another support is removed, until the dolly reaches its final position to assemble the donut to the stator.
Because of the need to connect and disconnect the supports from the rail, manufacturing can be time consuming.